Trump, GOP victories don’t guarantee unified government

With the election of Donald Trump, the “outsider” is now in and many are asking, now what? The bitterly divisive campaign not only pitted Democrats against Republicans but also many congressional Republicans against Trump. Here, a longtime political scientist and author gives his perspective on what’s in store for Candidate Trump when he becomes President Trump.

Before any talk of national unity will be credible, President-elect Donald J. Trump must first unify the Republican Party. Though Republicans will now hold the White House, Senate and House, a unified government is no guarantee of legislative success when an outsider captures the presidency. Dwight Eisenhower (in 1952) and Jimmy Carter (in 1976) both faced ongoing obstruction and opposition from senators and congressmen committed to isolationism, in Eisenhower’s case, or continued spending increases for the Great Society programs of Lyndon Johnson, in Carter’s case.

Like all challengers running against the “in” party, Trump promised to change Washington starting on Day One — as if the president is the government; as if the values and policies of the president must necessarily align with the values and policies of the entire government.

As George W. Bush wryly noted in 2008, “When I campaigned for office, I said I was for change ... Everybody who campaigns is for change.” Change, he pointedly added, is “a very effective slogan.” He might as well have said “just a slogan.”

As different as the three men are in most ways, Trump, Eisenhower and Carter all won the nomination because their party was stalemated over irreconcilable demands of leaders and the basic concerns of the party’s voters. In each case, the candidate won the primaries via clear, straightforward positions that were popular with the party’s base, yet violated sacrosanct dogma that party leaders could not — or would not — modify.

Trump broke sacred party taboos about spending, taxes and deportation, and mixed it all with a large dose of protectionism and isolationism. He also took a very different approach to Medicare and Social Security than his Republican primary rivals. These were not casual promises unnoticed by voters; Republicans who ranked both immigration and Social Security as “very important” issues were 40 points more likely to support Trump than other Republicans.

In simple and direct sentences, Trump articulated the unavoidable bottom line of the Republican Party’s immigration stand: The only alternative to citizenship or amnesty was deportation. He also promised to strengthen Social Security and Medicare, and finance it by raising taxes on the rich.

Now that Candidate Trump will become President Trump, he must deal with members of his party who will strive to protect their personal reputations and prerogatives when they conflict with the president’s national agenda. Nearly half of all Republican senators, for example, come from states so red that over 60 percent of the state’s senate is perpetually Republican. Any concessions those senators make to help President Trump achieve his goals will make them more vulnerable to primary challenges in their own states. This is not new; shortly after he brought Republicans unified control of federal government for the first time in 20 years, Eisenhower lamented that “Republican senators are having a hard time getting through their heads that they now belong to a team that includes, rather than opposes, the White House.”

Speaker Paul Ryan’s “Better Way” agenda for Congress omits trade and immigration because those issues divide the party. Now he and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have to reconcile long-standing party positions with the Trump agenda. It won’t be easy.

After opposing any legislation that included amnesty for undocumented immigrants since 2005 — when George W. Bush failed to deliver on his promise to resolve the immigration impasse — no other candidate could discredit Trump’s appealing (but likely unworkable) deportation policy without de facto supporting some form of amnesty. In five states — including California — more than 20 percent of eligible voters will be Hispanic in 2020; in another six states, they will comprise over 10 percent of the electorate. There are also 4.5 million U.S. citizens under 18 living with our 11 million undocumented immigrants. Is there an immigration policy that will be acceptable to the rural and small town voters who propelled the president-elect that will not also set back the party in key battleground states?

The core of the president-elect’s coalition is voters concerned about protecting their own “deserved” entitlements from being spent on less-deserving others. For years, Trump warned Republicans that altering Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security for the worse was mutually exclusive with winning elections. During the campaign, he said repeatedly that it was his “absolute intention” to strengthen these programs, doing so by raising taxes on the rich. Every other primary rival talked about the rising cost of entitlements and controlling the budget to avoid raising any taxes; Trump beat them all. Will the Republicans in Congress go along with President Trump and defer addressing the rising costs of entitlements, or will they offer the president no choice but to cut benefits, raise the retirement age, or change Medicare to a voucher program?

The first step to “Make America Great Again” is making government trustworthy again by ending the gridlock within Congress, and between Congress and the White House. If President Trump can persuade his voters that he has made their future Medicare and Social Security benefits secure, he will have their proxy during the long and complex process of negotiating with his own party in Congress to pass legislation on ending the immigration impasse and tackling his other campaign promises.

Popkin is a professor of political science at UCSD and author of “The Candidate: What it Takes to win — and Hold — the White House.”